Than hear you sing
by Mediancat
Summary: Another one of Richard Wilkins' bargains comes due, and only one person can stop it: Cordelia Chase. Now the problem is convincing her . . . And the actual title is "...than hear you sing."


Author's Note: Old fic of mine. Written during the third season, set between _Amends _and _Gingerbread_. Only minor corrections have been amde since it was originally published.

Disclaimer: The Buffy characters were created by Joss Whedon. The storyline and the original characters are mine.

Part One

She had no idea how she got to the edge of the cliff, but she recognized it as being in Sunnydale. There was nothing really resembling the cliff anywhere in Sunnydale--the makeout place had way too much grass, and this place was barren, and there were people working below. Fires from above lit up the night.

There was a low, moaning sound which she couldn't quite place; there were people she recognized --Giles, Willow, Harmony, her mother--working hard at building something. From the glare of the light she couldn't quite tell what it was, but it was definitely NOT good. And they were all trapped down there.

She somehow knew that she had to sing. Singing would solve all of the problems.

--Xander was there beside her. Where he had come from, she had no idea, but there she was. He interrupted her as she was about to draw a breath. "You know what?" he said. "I'd rather let them stay in hell..."

--they were all glaring up at her from the pit. What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to handle this? How had it all come down to her?

X X X X X

As she'd done every night for the last four nights in a row, she woke up gasping for breath at precisely 5:17 AM. Four straight nights probably meant that this was something prophetic. So she should take it to the expert.

She lay there for fifteen minutes, and eventually gave up on going back to sleep. She hadn't been able to any of the other three nights, there was no reason to think this would be any different.

One thing that had been different--Xander had almost completed his statement this time.

Nothing. No sleep. Damn. Well, it just gave her extra time to prepare herself for school.

After a nice, long, relaxing soak, she felt like she was a human being again. She dressed and spent extra-long combing her hair and applying her makeup--clattering so loud she was sure she could have woken the dead. Oops. Bad phrasing in this town. Anyway, there were no complaints.

She left home early, and got to school extra-early, walking in the front doors the moment they opened, a privilege usually taken advantage of by only a few, football players sneaking in an extra workout, science geeks working on extra-credit projects, and so on. Today, though, she was the first one in the building--and in point of fact, except for the janitors, the ONLY one in the building, though Principal Snyder stumbled in ten seconds after she did, looking like he had a hangover without having gotten drunk first. He glared at her, but said nothing as he made his way down the hall.

Anyway, if she wanted to catch Giles early, she had to get to the library early. She slipped down the deserted halls and crept through the weirdly open library doors into the room.

Giles was asleep, collapsed over the central table, over a book. Sweet--but she needed help. She marched over to the table and tapped him on the shoulder.

He shifted a bit, but didn't stir.

She grabbed him and gently shook him; then, when that didn't work, she shook him a bit more roughly.

He mumbled something and finally, blearily, opened his eyes. "What--what--what's going on?" Then he looked up. It seemed to take him a few seconds to recognize her.

"What are _you _doing here?" the librarian said a bit snappishly.

"I need your help, of course," she said, puzzled. "What's with the attitude?"

"You did just wake me up," he answered. "And in any event you haven't been in this library ever since you and Xander broke up. So I feel a moment of surprise and shock is rather in order."

"Geeze, what is it with the people in this town? I've heard of lazy winters but this is ridiculous!"

Giles prompted, still a touch irritably, "You did come here for a reason, correct?" as he made a vain attempt to smooth out his hair. Please! Clear pores, nice bone structure, but Giles' hair on the best of days needed two hours with a hair stylist. A fingercombing was just _not _going to cover it.

Anyway. "Right. I've been having the same dream for four nights running, and it seems to involve almost everyone in Sunnydale in some kind of trance, and building things, and all I need to do is save them is sing, but Xander starts to make fun of me and I don't, and then I wake up. Everyone's down in this big pit, building something--and the pit's somewhere in Sunnydale, I know it, but it's nowhere in Sunnydale in real life. Am I making sense?"

"As much as you ever do," he answered. "What makes you think this dream requires my help?"

"Isn't it obvious?" He shook his head. "There's a kind of feel to it. Like there's something I have to do or it'll all go wrong. Something urging me on. And the people in the pit--are doing something evil. Not on purpose, you know, but it's way evil."

"I don't know of anything offhand," he answered, "But I'll do some research to see if I can come up with something. Fair enough?"

"You're not brushing me off, are you?" she demanded.

"No. If you're worried, I'll look it up for you. When can you meet me back here?"

"When are Buffy and all the rest not likely to be here?"

"6th period, today, I believe. Cordelia, you have, in the past--"

Sensing that the librarian was about to try to reconcile her with "The Scooby Gang" and wanting no part of it, she interrupted. "That's gym, for me. But I'm excused from that. I'm on this diet which absolutely prevents me from doing any kind of strenuous exercise. Of course, all I get to drink is bottled water, but still--"

Frustrated, Giles said, "Very well then. Sixth period it is. See you then."

Then he got up and stiffly limped into his office.

She turned and left the room. If the brainy guy was in on it -- well, he'd figure it out.

Now if he'd only do something about all that tweed...

X X X X X

Giles shook his head as he entered his office. There was a definite pain in his leg when he sat down -- odd that he didn't remember having injured it -- but that was of little matter.

Cordelia actually had been of some help in the past -- ut this was too much. For the girl to imagine that she was having dreams that were in any way prophetic was little short of ridiculous. Still, a promise was a promise, and given that he would spend a few hours looking for information to see if there was any possibility that this dream might, indeed be relevant to something important due to occur.

He blinked a few times and shook his head again, trying to wake up. Now then: Dreams of a pit, and of singing to save people...

X X X X X

Mayor Richard Wilkins woke up abruptly; he was bent over the desk in his office.

Which was extremely odd, because he'd fallen asleep in his own bed, at home, and he was not prone to sleepwalking. As he raised his head he noticed that he was resting in on a sheet of paper written, sloppily, in his own handwriting.

"TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT," it read. And it was signed, "Hypnos." He'd suspected that Hypnos' time was near, but he never thought the magician would be arrogant enough to control _his _body. Well, no matter, he knew exactly what Hypnos wanted, and exactly his part in how to prepare for the event. From the old clock on the wall -- 7:30 or so in the morning -- he had plenty of time to get it all together, until around midnight. Still, he had not been put into office to waste the taxpayers' time, so as soon as he yawned, stretched, and washed his hands, he placed two phone calls.

The first was to Deputy Mayor Finch, telling him to get a specific powder from a storage locker in the City Hall basement.

The second was to Mr. Trick. After all, there was a Slayer in town, and even if she was likely to be as easily affected as everyone else -- well, best not to take chances, right?

Part Two

Buffy came into the library only a few minutes before the first bell rang, Willow and Oz trailing unsteadily behind her. Giles was hunched over a book, studying intently.

"Hey, Giles," Buffy said. "A little light reading?" She lifted up the book--to his mild protests--and let it drop back to the table. "Honsenberg's Interpretation of Mystical Dreams?" A sober look came over her face. "We're not entering prophecy territory again, are we?"

"Not to my knowledge; I'm just looking up something for -- erm -- a friend, who has been having dreams she thinks may be significant."

Willow perked up at that; she and Oz had been kind of leaning against one another, mostly for support. "Really, Giles?" she said, stifling a yawn. "She?"

The Watcher answered, "Nothing like that," with none of the usual embarrassment. "Actually, it's Cordelia."

"Cordelia?" all three said in unison.

"I didn't think there was much to it, but I promised her I'd do a little work on it -- to ease her fears, if nothing else. Only now --"

"I don't like the way you just said now, Giles," Buffy said. "I hate it when you say now that way."

"To my knowledge, this is the first time I've actually said it that way," the librarian said.

Oz said, standing clear of Willow and rubbing his collarbone, "I think it was the not liking that was important. I could be wrong."

"Here's the problem, Buffy," Giles said. "I still can't find conclusive proof one way or the other that Cordelia's dreams meant anything. But there are a couple of disturbing coincidences. In Cordelia's dream, almost the entire population of Sunnydale is in a pit, they are all constructing something, and she has to sing to save them from the spell they were under."

"Hmmm," Buffy said mock-thoughtfully. "Cordy singing versus being under a spell. Cordy's singing versus being under a spell..." at Oz's puzzled look, she said, "That's right, you never heard her sing. Call you Mr. Lucky."

"Bad?"

"Let's, let's just say," Giles said, "That calling her attempts at vocalization 'caterwauling' is an insult to felines everywhere. Now, there are records of vaguely similar occurrences in the past -- right before the vanishings of twenty or so of the best and brightest in the locales near the dreamer -- but nothing on this scale. The trouble is that there is absolutely nothing in here about song of any sort."

"Giles," Buffy said as Willow and Oz plopped heavily into chairs, "I told you once there were two things I didn't believe in, coincidence and leprechauns. Well, this is definitely one of them, and since I don't see any small men with green hats running around --"

"It gets worse," Giles said.

"Why can't you ever say 'it gets better?'" Willow said, a bit more curtly than usual.

"Because it so rarely does," Giles snapped back.

"Okay, who put the nasty juice in your cups this morning?" Buffy asked.

"Sorry, Giles," Willow said. "I just haven't been sleeping well recently."

Giles head snapped upwards so sharply Buffy was afraid her Watcher would get whiplash. "That's even worse news, because neither have I -- and neither, I suspect, has Oz, or even you, Buffy, though your Slayer strength appears to have you in better shape than the rest of us."

"That's not saying much," Oz said. "I feel like I've been running marathons every night instead of sleeping."

As sharply as he could, Giles said, "Could the three of you scope this out and see how other people have been sleeping?"

'Will do, boss man," Buffy said.

"And speaking of how people feel -- how is Xander doing?"

"Stomach flu in full bloom," Willow said. "Ick factor times twelve. No eating, no drinking, no nothing."

"We all know how that feels," Giles replied. "Let him know I hope he feels better." Then, with a noticeable lack of bounce to their step, the three students left the library to head to class.

X X X X X

She walked into the lunchroom steadily but without her normal grace. Now, she was tired, having gotten only six hours of sleep at most, but, God! compared to everyone else she saw, she was positively little Miss ultracaffeinated.

Normally the lunchroom would have been reasonably animated, but today, whatever conversations there were were quiet and hushed. The school lunch was a cold cut sandwich -- not that the cheerleader would be eating that, anyway, with the diet she was on, but please! Where was the pride in workmanship?

She looked around for an empty table, and finally found one. Harmony sneered as she passed, but otherwise no one gave her any kind of hard time. Her reputation would be a long time in recovering from having been dumped by Xander Harris, but it had taught her one thing, and that's that if you don't respect the opinions of the people insulting you, what they say can't hurt you in the least.

Which would mean that she'd respected Xander, and Buffy, and that group, to still be stung by their words and actions. Well, so be it. She still respected them enough to know that they'd provide some solution if her dreams were some kind of prophecy. So she still respected even Xander at some level? So be it. She was completely innocent in all of this anyway.

She carefully sipped from her bottle of spring water and ate the apple as she watched the people pass by, truth be told, there wasn't a guy in the room who was worth giving a second glance, at least not today. Everyone but her and Buffy--and Jonathan!--seemed to be absolutely dragging, physically and mentally exhausted. Mrs. Landers, the sub in English while Mr. Lavoie recovered from the broken he arm he got when he fell out of bed, had spent five minutes trying to lead the class in a discussion of _The Merchant of Venice_ before anyone thought to remind her that they were actually reading _Julius Caesar_.

Before she'd gotten involved with Buffy and her merry gang of Ghostbusters she would have rationalized all of this away. For the last two months she'd been praying to have that blindness return, with no luck. It was like trying to go back to being a virgin --

--or so she'd been told. (No, really.) Anyway, with her damned monstervision at 20/20 she couldn't help but see these things. Just thank the gods someone else had to deal with them now. Find out if the dream's a prophecy and pass it along. She supposed she should also bring up this general decaffeinated state everyone was wandering around in, too.

She finished with the apple and started to get up when Buffy walked by.

"Hey, Cordy," she said.

"Buffy," she answered coolly, with a slight nod of her head.

"How are you feeling today?"

"Do you really care?"

"Believe it or not, yes, I do," Buffy said.

"Well, I don't believe. You only put up with me because of Xander. Well, newsflash: He betrayed me and we broke up. You can quit pretending you like me, okay?" Actually, she wasn't sure whether Buffy cared or not, but that wasn't the point.

Buffy sighed. "Alright then. Blame me for trying," and she walked over to where Willow and Oz were standing by the cafeteria door. Oz, now--was he whipped or what? Gets the same shock, the same treatment, and he goes meekly back to Willow within a few weeks. Self-esteem classes, stat!

And where was Xander?

-- not like she cared!

X X X X X

On the pretext of making a surprise inspection of some of the city's facilities, Mayor Wilkins and Deputy Mayor Finch walked into the Sunnydale water processing plant. After fifteen minutes of bullshitting, they finally got some time back to themselves. They walked to the intake area, the Deputy Mayor carrying a small bag of powder a bit carelessly.

"Might want to watch what you're doing with that," the Mayor said calmly. "If a single speck of that gets in your body you'll fall asleep on me."

"That doesn't sound so bad," Finch said.

"Falling asleep on the job is very serious, you should know that," his Honor answered amiably. "I might have to give you the axe." Finch panicked. "Oh, relax! I'm only kidding. They don't need weapons, not with the teeth they have."

The Deputy Mayor gripped the bag even more tightly. Then, as he gently, carefully sprinkled it into the city's water supply, the mayor chanted something from a small book he'd been carrying. Normally the Mayor didn't take a personal hand in this--deniability, and all -- but Hypnos was fussy, and the Mayor really only trusted himself to do it right. Then, abruptly, a few minutes later, his honor closed the book and started marching out. Finch, startled, almost dropped the bag, but recovered and hurried out the door after him.

"Well done," Mayor Wilkins said as if he meant it. "Just one thing. Until tomorrow, treat Sunnydale like you would any small Mexican village."

"Huh?"

"Don't drink the water."

Part Three

She walked into the library during sixth period and told Giles what she'd seen and felt during theday.

"Hmmmm," the librarian said. "That, unfortunately, added to what Buffy's told me, only goes to confirm my suspicions: You are, indeed, having a prophetic dream."

"Well, of course!" She said, shaking her head. "Hold on! You told Buffy?"

"Did you expect me not to?" he answered.

"Well, not until I was clear of all of it! Not until you'd figured out what was going on and told me how to avoid it."

He let out a deep breath. "Cordelia, it may not be that simple."

"That's the pattern! Someone notices a problem, you figure it out, Buffy Slays and the rest of us aren't even involved!"

"If you're the one having the dream, Cordelia, you will be involved, somehow, whether you want to be or not."

"Right now, that's a definite not."

"Just promise me this," Giles said. "Stay awake tonight. Forgo your 'beauty sleep" until we figure out what's going on." He pointed behind him. There were books aplenty lying around, all having to do with various deities, demons, and sorcerers of sleep. "The problem is," Giles explained, "That there are so many of them. We spend on the average one third of our lives in that state, so there is no wonder, but that makes our task all the harder. Fortunately, many are benign and a few of the rest are dead, dormant, or otherwise occupied. Which still leaves us a nice list of several dozen."

She supposed it was the least she could do. "Done," she said. "After all, you are interpreting it for me."

"Interpreting. Right." Giles leaned over his books.

"One more thing," she said as she turned to leave. "Everyone seems tired and exhausted, and people have been sleepwalking, and everything. Does this help?"

"Actually, it probably does," Giles said, sounding a little surprised. She couldn't see why...she'd done a lot to help -- a lot more help than they'd ever been to her! What had contact with them ever gotten her? She wasn't nearly the person she'd used to be before she met them--and while she didn't need anyone to establish who she was, she still hadn't redefined herself either. It was like...there was something missing, you know? Anyway.

"Well, there you go!" She said brightly, and left the library.

X X X X X

Giles and Buffy were hard at work...Giles was brewing up several pots of heavily caffeinated tea and coffee; Buffy was bringing in the Diet Mountain Dew and Jolt Cola. When the phenomenon repeated, they'd be wide awake and ready for it, no question at all.

There had been a noticeable lack of vampires tonight; in four hours of patrolling Buffy had caught only a couple of newly risen undead at one of Sunnydale's many cemeteries. By itself, not so unusual, but added on to the sleepwalking, the tiredness, and Cordelia's dream, it was another factor in the equation.

Had Cordelia not explained her dream this morning, though, Giles doubted they would have caught on quite so quickly. Thank goodness Cordelia's alienation from Buffy and her friends didn't extend quite so far as to make the girl completely irresponsible.

Shortly, Willow and Oz straggled in, followed, surprisingly, by a weak-appearing Xander Harris.

Buffy grinned and then frowned. "You up for this, Xander?"

"Never let it be said," Xander answered, "That when a crisis comes that Xander Harris isn't ready for action." He plopped into a chair. "Even if I am too weak to turn a page or do anything productive."

"He whined and moaned until we let him come," Willow translated. "Then he spent most of the ride whining and moaning in the back seat." Par for the course, this lacked Willow's usual good humor. Oz also looked more sullen than stone-faced, but they were both there ready to fight the good fight, as least insofar as they were capable of fighting it.

"Hey," Xander said, "Besides, who's the expert on sleep around here anyway?" Everyone stared at him. "Bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum bum bum...Mr. Xand-Man, bring me a dream..."

"Xander," Giles said, "If we were awake to appreciate that that might almost have been humorous."

"Wow, Giles complimenting my sense of humor. Now I know there's a crisis in Sunnydale."

That nearly brought a smile to Giles' lips, though he fought not to show it. "Will you be able to stay awake with the rest of us...given your condition?"

"For the last forty-eight hours I've done nothing but sleep and...something too gross to be mentioned. I don't think I'm going to go to sleep for a week."

"That leaves you several steps above the rest of us," Buffy commented. "So, what's the progress on the research? And have you puzzled out the meaning of Cordy's dream?"

Giles gestured to a dozen books lying on the table and the counter. "I've managed to narrow it down to seven. . . five of whom are demons, one of whom is some kind of djinn, and the seventh of whom is an ancient Greek sorcerer who masqueraded as a god of sleep. What we need to do in the next couple of hours is go over the histories of these seven with a proverbial fine-tooth comb. We have caffeine so that, should the events described in Cordelia's dream come to pass, we'll be awake." Giles was still feeling as tired and sore as he had this morning, but now that he was in the flow of "research mode," he no longer felt like he was in imminent danger of falling face-first onto the library floor.

"And what if we need to be asleep?" Willow said.

Buffy turned. "Lack of sleep does not agree with you, girl."

"In any event," Giles broke in. "We do have chaff to separate from wheat here, so if we could get to it...?"

They all nodded, Giles passed out books. "Okay, Buffy...you can look at Yazusi, Oz, you can read up on Ghoti, Willow, you can look at the djinn, Almaghestos, and I'll handle the remaining three demons."

Xander waved his arm weakly. "Oh, right, Xander. You read up on the Greek sorcerer. . . Hypnos."

X X X X X

Mayor Wilkins sat in his office; he'd kept his staff there late that night, supposedly to pull together information and a strategy on a public works bill, and gosh darn if they hadn't put together some numbers that should plow right through the city council. So two birds with one stone, which worked out nicely.

He did wish he knew a bit more about what Hypnos wanted; the sorcerer, unlike the demons, didn't want any kind of tribute in the form of sacrifices; he wanted the mayor's aid in building some kind of mysterious device -- which meant enlisting the population of Sunnydale.

Given the number of sleepwalkers and exhausted employees he had, it was obvious that Hypnos had already been flexing his muscles, mystically speaking, of course. But he needed guarantees that everyone would stay asleep long enough for his contraption to be completed. Thus, the powder.

The Mayor looked up at the clock. It was almost time. He said, interrupting the city comptroller, "Okay, Lou. Sorry about that, but it looks like everyone's getting tired and I think it's about time to bring this meeting to a close." Then, from memory, he recited the five magic words from the book necessary to complete the spell.

Instantly Lou, and everyone else, dropped off into a deep sleep. He looked over at his deputy, who, amazingly, had managed to follow his instructions and was still awake. Mental note to self: He thinks too much, such men are dangerous. Something to be thought about.

"So now what?" Finch asked.

"Now? Now we watch and wait," Mayor Wilkins answered. He looked over at Lou's snoring figure. "You know something? I think that's the most intelligent thing I've ever heard come out of Lou's mouth."

Then Lou's head shot up, and the Deputy Mayor let out a yelp and jumped backwards. "Hello, Hypnos," His Honor said.

In a high-pitched voice that most definitely was not Lou's own, Lou said, "Mayor Wilkins. Well done." Then he, and everyone else, rose. "Follow me," came the sorcerers' voice.

Not really having anything better to do, the Mayor followed.

Part Four

Angel was walking through the streets of Sunnydale and thinking. It had been under two weeks since Buffy had saved his life . . . since his encounter with the First.

How was he going to make amends, as Buffy had suggested? Obviously what he'd been doing before...before his demon had taken control hadn't nearly been enough. Cryptic boy was just doing bits and pieces. But what else was he to do? Despite the number of times he'd aided Buffy in combat, he was no superhero.

He was just looking at the scenery. It was amazing sometimes how peaceful Sunnydale could look at night, considering the number of inhabitants it had with every intent of not keeping it that way. Much as he tried to convince himself that he wasn't drifting back towards the high school, towards the old, predictable pattern of his existence, towards...Buffy, he knew the truth without ever needing to say it.

Besides, Angel was largely a creature of habit.

He passed by a recent construction site on the spot of Sunnydale High's old science building. It was nice to see them finally making use of the place.

Headlights approached Angel as he walked along the road away from the entrance to the school. At first he barely paid the approaching car any attention...then he noticed it was veering awfully close to the sidewalk. Fascinated, repelled, he watched as it roared towards him, over the curb and into the low stone wall at the front of the school. He threw himself into the street as it skidded to a halt not five feet from where he was standing.

Getting up, he dusted himself off--of course he was unhurt--and ran over to see what had happened, and to help. "Is everybody okay..." he trailed off, noticing that something wasn't happening.

The car's inhabitants weren't screaming and trying to escape. They were just sitting there. For half a second Angel feared the worst, but then he heard their slow, easy breathing. They were asleep!

How was that possible? Didn't matter. He reached in through the doors and grabbed the cell phone, and dialed 911. After thirty seconds, there still was no answer. Just as Angel was about to try calling someone else, the car's inhabitants moved.

And they were still asleep. Though the man's right arm dangled, and the woman was bleeding from a nose that looked like it belonged on a hockey player, they forced their way out of the car and walked off in a line leading around a nearby tree somewhere behind the high school's main building.

From behind him, he heard a slight noise. Then another sleepwalker strode past him and walked off in the same direction as the couple. And it seemed like more and more were approaching.

Then Angel saw someone who was still awake -- then he gott a good look at the face and recognized him as another vampire, about to try and grab a meal from one of the helpless somnambulists. "What Trick doesn't know..." the vampire said.

It was a short fight. Angel grabbed the other vampire and threw him into the car, then reached behind him and broke a branch off the tree. The rookie was predictable and charged right into the stake. Angel brushed off the dust and thought.

Everyone's fallen asleep and is going somewhere -- Buffy! Closest to the library, so check there first. He sprinted through the halls of the school and flung open the doors.

Just as their former presence in the room was beginning to register on him, Xander stood up from behind the counter and almost gave him a heart attack.

X X X X X

Xander struggled to suppress a yawn. He hadn't been lying, exactly, but the stomach flu did take an awful lot out of him.

Willow and Oz, despite the two bottles of Jolt they'd consumed each, were almost as bad off as he was. Buffy, being the Slayer, just looked a little tired, and Giles--

"Hey, G-Man," he muttered. "You keep on the way you're going you're going to have more tea in your veins than blood."

"I realize that," the Watcher snapped irritably, and then began to apologize. Xander had heard a dozen sorries already in the last hour and a half, from Giles, Willow, and Oz, but he'd long ago figured out that it had nothing to do with him. Besides, he still owed Will and the wolf so many apologies for what he'd done to their relationship -- if he felt better, he would have been antsy around them, but right now he didn't have the energy to spare for that.

"No biggie at all. Really." And he meant it. Really.

The progress had been mixed. Willow had caught on right away that the djinn Almaghestos wasn't who they were looking for. It wasn't the right time of year; he liked to be active only in the summer. Now there was a spirit with the right attitude. Buffy got Giles to agree that Yazusi, a Japanese sleep demon, wasn't very likely, because even though he had the power to control others while asleep--and was actually known as the Dreamsinger--he hadn't been seen outside Japan in over a thousand years. Finally, Giles had crossed two of the names off the list without bothering to explain why, and given his sour mood Xander wasn't about to ask him.

So Willow and Oz were intently studying Ghoti, Buffy and Giles were ganging up on some Native American spirit called the Raven of Night, and Xander was still reading about Hypnos. The happy couple was pointing things out and whispering, while the Slayer-Watcher combo was doing their own thing quietly.

He hoped like hell that Hypnos wasn't the bad guy they were facing, because he was one powerful SOB for someone who hadn't even woken up to take a leak in the last 2300 years. Hypnos got his jollies by controlling others as they slept, and speaking through them; in Rome in the 1700's he'd led one leading citizen of the city after another to walk off bridges in their sleep. A demon hunter, name of Vincienzo del Negro, had driven him out of town. How, wasn't clear, dammit. He felt it probably was Hypnos they were going up against, he just wished he had the confidence to say so for sure.

Willow and Oz stopped talking.

The book he was reading was nothing but the exploits and legends of Hypnos, and thank god it was written in modern English or he would have dropped off a long time ago.

Hold on -- what was this? "Giles, Buffy, everyone, come over and take a look at this."

No one answered. Xander looked up and said, "Hey..." and then stopped in shock.

Everyone had fallen asleep over the books. He chuckled hollowly and said, "C'mon, guys, not funny...'" But no one was laughing.

Slowly, he stood up and shook Giles, who was closest to him. Nothing. Then he walked over to Buffy and, hesitantly, dumped a can of soda over her head. Normally this would have gotten him slapped and yelled at -- but it didn't work. Buffy just lay there, snoring away, with Diet Mountain Dew dribbling down her face onto the table.

As frantic and energized as he could be with a virus in his stomach, he passed the next five minutes doing everything short of lighting a fire under their feet to get them to wake up. Nothing.

Then, suddenly, they all stood upright. Just as Xander was about to breathe a sigh of relief...he noticed they were still asleep. In unison, they all started walking to the door. Helplessly, he tried to stop them, but Buffy just shoved him to one side -- he tumbled back behind the counter -- and kept going.

But just as he thought things couldn't get any worse, he heard voices coming into the room, laughing and hoarsely cheerful. An inner voice told him not to stand up or call out; he peered around the corner...and saw four vampires just standing there. A black one wearing a gray suit punched some numbers into a cell phone and said, jovially, "Mr. Mayor? Trick here. Yeah she's under. Got the Watcher and a couple of her friends too. Naah, the dork and the bitch ain't here, but word on the street is, he's too sick to do anything and she's not their friend anymore." A pause. "Anyway, I'll be sure to keep these four safe and sound on the way over." An audible click. "Okay, boys, you heard the man. Much as I'd like to get rid of some of our troubles right now, I'm afraid it's just not in the cards. So let's just lay low and at the end of the night hizzoner's promised us all a couple of nice, juicy children, our choice. So, chop-chop, people!"

Xander waited until he couldn't hear anything, counted to fifty, then to fifty again, and stood up and looked over the counter.

And nearly had a heart attack when he saw Angel standing there.

Part Five

She avoided getting undressed for bed as long as possible, but was finally forced into it. The phone line was clear, there was no question about that, but as of 11:30 or so there hadn't been any phone calls and her excuses weren't working any more. So as she got into the bed, in her nightclothes, she struggled to stay awake. By claiming a fear of the dark--no great stretch in Sunnydale -- she managed to keep her lights on, and pointed towards the head of her bed so the brightness was right in her face.

Was her singing the key to solving this problem? Well, then, if she had to, and the librarian said so, she'd sing.

But what to sing? Something light and fluffy? No; even she realized how silly it would be to try to bring down an evil demon thing by singing "Love Can Move Mountains," or anything similar. Besides, she hadn't really been in a light and fluffy mood for a while, anyway, not since Willow and Xander so cruelly betrayed her and the flock of sheep started making fun of her in public.

Right, then. Something to show her anger, her rage. Alanis Morrissette? God knew there was a woman in touch with her inner bitch. Natalie Imbruglia? A definite maybe, though Torn was a bit too, too, begging, and she begged no one.

It was funny, you know? All the men she'd dated, and he--Xander--was the only one she'd fallen in love with. Which only made the betrayal a million times worse, of course. He hadn't come within, within a hundred MILLION miles of her soul...hadn't known who she was or that she loved him until it was WAY too late.

Hold on--that was it! So, to herself, she rehearsed, proudly, how she'd stand at the edge of the cliff and save everyone...

right up until the moment she fell asleep.

X X X X X

Angel and Xander eyed each other warily.

"What are you doing h-" Xander began; simultaneously, Angel said with a puzzled voice, "How are you still awake--" then they both stopped.

Angel spoke first after the brief silence. "You're here, you're awake, I'd say you know more about what's going on than I do. Care to fill me in?"

Xander, a bit surprised by Angel's deferential attitude, staggered over to a chair, sat down into it heavily, and began explaining everything, from Cordy's dream to the events of ten minutes ago. As an afterthought, he brought up Buffy's four vampire escorts. Angel asked him a few pointed questions and then explained what he'd seen. People with broken arms, busted noses, not waking up?

"Where were they all going?" Xander asked.

"Somewhere off behind the main building. I didn't see exactly where. I was a little preoccupied."

"With..." then Xander put two and two together and got a four he still wasn't all that fond of. "You weren't coming in here to get information," he said. "You were coming here to check up on Buffy. Weren't you?"

The vampire tensed. "Yes..."

Xander didn't have the energy to explode. "If I felt better right now, I might make some commentary on how I thought the two of you were trying to stay out of each other's lives as much as possible, but I really don't have the energy for an argument. And besides, this isn't the time, either."

Angel looked down at him, sadly. "I'm never going to stop loving her, you realize. Even if we do move on--to other people--that's never going to change. I'm sorry if that depresses you."

"Something you said when you were Angelus -- that that it must just kill me that you got there first. And you were right, but not in the way you think. It never killed me that you slept with her first, but that she loved you first." Xander shrugged. "You hurt me more with that line than with anything else you'd ever done, you know?"

A longer silence was broken when Angel said, "So, you thought you'd found something?"

Xander reached across the table for the book...and after an effort, brought it nearer. "Look at this. . . I think this is the dude we're up against. Look at what he tried to do in Christchurch not fifty years ago. This sounds exactly like Cordy's dream." In New Zealand in 1951, Hypnos had been attempting to construct some kind of raised mystical pattern...no one survived who'd gotten a clear look at it, but from the reports if completed it would have kept everyone who was under his control at that time permanently under his control, using some kind of soundwaves.

This had only been stopped when the Slayer at the time stopped the symbol from being built by setting the entire area on fire. This had killed not only her, but several dozen of the affected people. Since then, Hypnos had disappeared. Until now, obviously.

Angel said, "This feels right. Especially if what you told me about Cordelia's dream is accurate. Sound, construction, everyone under his spell..."

Reluctantly picking up the phone, Xander dialed Cordelia's number -- God knew it was burned into his brain by now -- but there was no answer at the other end. He looked up at Angel and shook his head.

"Well, then, if we have to stop it, we will." Xander nodded in agreement. "The first thing we should do is find out where all these people are going, and maybe then we can try to locate Cordelia." Xander stood up, a bit unsteady on his feet. Angel looked at him curiously. "Are you going to be up for this, Xander? You look like hell."

"Oh, I, do? Well...earlier tonight I looked like shit, so I'm calling that an improvement." Then, seriously, "Of course I'm up for it. Have you ever known me to not be there in a crisis?" Angel just glared at him. "Okay, maybe I caused some of those crises, but still--"

"Right, then. Try to look asleep." As they opened the library's front doors, Angel stopped and turned to look at him. "One more thing: Buffy said how you tried to help me on Christmas. So . . . thank you."

"I wasn't really doing it for you," Xander said.

"I know," the vampire answered. "Thank you anyway."

They both walked out to the main entrance to the school building and tried to blend into the sleepwalking crowd. Xander got nervous when they passed by a pair of female vampires, in black, but they made it by them with no real problems.

Then they rounded the corner of the school building and finally saw where everyone was going one, two, three at a time, they were all marching into the high school's football stadium.

Stopping, Xander was almost run over by the person behind him. Angel sighed and half-carried him over to the parking lot, where they concealed themselves behind a dumpster. Angel perched there while Xander practically collapsed onto the pavement...and then got the dry heaves. After thirty seconds, stomach muscles aching, he stopped. Looking up at Angel, he half-grinned. "Just when you thought you've got one of these things beat..."

Angel whispered, "Well, it makes sense to some extent. It's a large,open space, invisible, really, to anyone standing outside..."

"It's Cordy's cliff!" Xander said. "In the dream, she was standing at the edge of a cliff and looking down. So maybe she was standing in the top row of the stadium?"

"Maybe," Angel said, sounding distracted. "Tell me something: Giles said Cordelia was having the dreams because she was the key to stopping Hypnos, right?" Xander said yes. "Then look over there and tell me we're not in trouble." Following the direction of the vampire's pointing finger, Xander saw Cordelia, asleep, marching towards the stadium.

Part Six

Mr. Trick walked around the perimeter of the football field. Every once in a while one of them would look up at him and say, "That's right, vampire, look all you want, but don't touch." Same words, same tone, just different voices. The effect was damned eerie, and Trick, now, he knew eerie, and it wasn't anyplace in Indiana.

At one point he stopped and asked of no one in particular, "Hey! Hypnos! Just curious. What's this thing do?"

The Slayer herself came walking up to him and said, "Nothing you need to worry about, my vampire friend...my spells don't affect the undead."

Trick began a protest and the Slayer broke in with, "She still has her Slaying abilities. Did you know that, vampire? These people have all the skills asleep that they did awake." Noticing the not esepcially subtle veiled threat, the vampire broke off and walked away. After a second, the Slayer nodded her head and went back to moving mounds of Earth. Trick walked up to the Mayor, who was sitting next to nervous nelly Deputy Mayor Allan Finch in the upper half of the stadium.

"Any problems?" The mayor asked.

"None I can see. The Slayer's as hard at work as everyone else, and no one else around seems inclined to get in the way of the sleepwalking army here. Reports are a few people peering out windows and that's about it."

"What about that other Slayer?"

"Out of town. Girl takes irresponsibility to a whole new level."

"Well, then," Finch said, smiling nervously. "Maybe this time around things will go smoothly."

"Don't count your magical symbols before they're completed," Trick answered. "One thing I've learned about dear sweet old Sunnydale is that there's always a possibility of something going wrong."

"Well, yes," Mayor Wilkins answered. "But then, that's why you're here, isn't it, Trick?"

"Flunky to the stars, that's me." Then Trick changed his tone. "Do you know What that symbol's gonna do?"

"Actually, no," the Mayor answered pleasantly. "I believe it's a method Hypnos is going to use to gain greater power over the sleepwalkers, but he didn't share any more than that. Why do you ask?"

"I don't think you have a need to know," Finch piped up.

"And I don't believe you have a need to live," Trick said irritably. "I just want to know if it's going to cause me any future grief, that's all." Finch cowered.

"Don't you think I'd tell you if it would?" Mayor Wilkins asked, leaning around Trick to look at the field. "Look at her," he said irrelevantly, pointing to the Slayer patting down a mound of dirt. "Doing the work of ten of them. What a wonder she'd be in the construction business."

"A regular human bulldozer," Trick said. "Look, your Honor. I think you're one of those people who doesn't even let his right wrist know what his right hand's doing. No, I don't think you'd tell me."

"Smart vampire," the Mayor said. "But in this case I really don't know anything more. You could always ask Hypnos..."

From the Mayor's tone Trick could tell that he was fully aware of the vampire's earlier attempts. So he just stopped talking, bowed formally, and walked back the stadium steps, where he quietly spread the word among his people:

Anything really out of the ordinary happens, grab a snack and head for the hills. One thing Trick had learned was when to cut his losses.

X X X X X

Xander knew full well that the image of Cordy he'd long held, that she was a shallow, spoiled bitch who was only interested in herself, was somewhat wrong. But still, seeing her sleepwalking towards the football stadium, all of his mental revising went sailing off into the night.

"That, that. . . Giles told her not to fall asleep!" Xander bellowed. He was literally unable to say more, he was so furious. His irritation at Cordelia was so intense right at that moment that he barely registered Angel's hand over his mouth until the vampire whispered to him.

"We might be in better shape if you didn't go out of your way to tell the enemy where we were." He still couldn't talk, and he wasn't in shape to do anything more creative or violent, so he just sat there and ground his teeth together in between short, sharp breaths. Looking down at him, Angel admitted, "It's not like I don't basically share your opinion at the moment." Then, eyes darting back and forth, the vampire dashed out and grabbed Cordelia from the crowd, then carried her unresisting form back to where the duo was hiding.

Sardonically, Xander said, "You were saying something about not letting the enemy know where we were?"

"Calculated risk," Angel shot back. "Hypnos controls all of these people at once, but he doesn't look through all of them at once, and I'd say he's probably more interested in what's going on inside his stadium right now than he is in those straggling in."

"So, now what do we do?" Xander grabbed the edge of the dumpster and forced himself to his feet. "They're in trouble in there!"

"And would you suggest we go charging in blindly? We need Cordelia to solve this, and right now she's not much good for solving anything. So, research boy..."

"You're right," Xander admitted. "And I'm hardly in shape to charge a few thousand sleepwalkers."

As they began to make their way back to the library, Angel with the limp form of Cordelia slung across his shoulders, the vampire couldn't resist a shot: "You're admitting that I'm right?"

"I'm not about to make it a habit, okay?" Although outwardly he was griping, inside Xander was smiling. This was the same kind of banter he and Angel had used, way back before he'd turned into the evil murdering bastard Angelus.

It was a small comfort...but it was something to cling onto.

X X X X X

Dimly, she was aware of being shaken.

This jolted her awake very quickly; she'd been trained for a long time on what to do when an earthquake struck. Why, she'd been first in her class in disaster preparedness five years running back in elementary school!

Only, as she quickly figured out from the passing scenery, this was no earthquake -- someone was carrying her!

She began to scream, after which two things happened in rapid succession. First, a hand was placed over her mouth, and second, she was placed on her feet on the...

floors of Sunnydale High?

Breaking off screaming, she looked up -- directly into Angel's eyes. Not at all intimidated, she said, "I don't care if you're one of the good guys again or not, you'd better have a damned good reason for this."

"Or what?" came an unexpectedly bitter voice from behind Angel. "You'll sue him? Sorry to break the news to you, Cordy, but all your daddy's high-priced lawyers don't mean jack where deadboy here's concerned. Which you'd know if you had more than a few puffs of cotton keeping your ears from slamming into each other." Her jaw dropped to hear Xander speaking to her like that, when HE'D betrayed her! "Sorry if you don't like the way I'm talking to you, Princess Paragon, but I haven't eaten solid food in two days, there's a horde of sleepwalkers building the key to Superman's Fortress of Solitude inside our football stadium, and you, who MIGHT just be the difference between whether we succeed or fail, you go falling merrily off to sleep--"

Fury growing with each nasty comment Xander made, she screamed back at him, "You're one to talk about not doing what you were told to do -- falling asleep on Oz like that, falling all over Willow like that -- I may not be perfect but I'm a hell of a lot closer than you are!"

Then Angel's calm voice broke through. "Hold on a second."

Her ex added, like he hadn't heard. "Tomorrow maybe I'll feel all guilty again, but right now..."

She just had time to spit back, "You'd better start feeling guilty right now--"

Angel raised his voice. "Xander, shut up." And Xander was quiet! "Cordelia, short version: Your dreams are beginning to come true, and everyone in the town has fallen asleep. Now then, Xander: Didn't you tell me you'd tried to wake everyone up when they fell asleep?"

It was tonight, and she had fallen asleep -- but Xander had no call in giving her a hard time for it. He said, "Yeah. Even dumped a soda on Buffy's head, but nothing happened."

"And I saw two people crash into a wall outside, and they didn't wake up either."

"Your point?" Xander asked, impatiently. She was hardly paying attention...no wonder they seemed so annoyed. Even so, no way she could have known it was tonight! Okay, time to pull a Clinton and compartmentalize. The guilt would have to wait until later.

"My point is...Cordelia woke up. You never fell asleep. Why?"

"Back to the library?"

"Back to the library. Cordelia, I think you can walk the rest of the way."

Part Seven

From behind them, Cordelia said, "Hold it. No way I'm going to be running around the schools at night in my nightgown. I mean, you two might be used to running around in your underwear, but I'm not!"

Angel couldn't believe what he was hearing. "We're not going back to your house, Cordelia, I don't care how embarrassed you are."

"Embarrassed? Hardly! Just that wormboy over there's long since lost his rights to see me wearing a nightgown -- and you blew your chance a long time ago."

As Angel was about to answer, Xander said, leaning heavily against the lockers, "Easier just to take her down to the locker room and get her gym clothes than to argue. Trust me on this one. I'll head off to the library and see what else is in that book. If you ever tell Giles this I'll kill -- well, okay.I'll get really mad, but it's actually a kind of fun read."

"Let's go!" Cordelia said brightly. Angel blinked. "Well it's either him or you, and while I don't trust you, I don't like him." Reluctantly, Angel followed the youngster's advice, waited impatiently outside the girl's locker room, and strained to keep from commenting when he found that not only had she changed clothes, she'd put on makeup. Despite the fact that she'd spent nearly a year trying to hit on him, which had frustrated him and Buffy no end, Angel had seen Cordelia grow from the selfish and irresponsible person that she'd been the first time they'd met, to someone who was substantially less shallow, selfish, and irresponsible. Even when the demon had been in charge, he'd noted it.

But since Spike had returned and hurt them worse by accident than he ever had on purpose, she'd regressed, and regressed badly, from everything Buffy'd told him. It was like she was repressing what she'd been, what she'd become, when she was with Xander. Angel understood that.

But right now, that didn't mean her behavior didn't also really tick him off.

Eventually, they went back and found that Xander had managed to drag himself into the library and was looking at the end of Hypnos' biography. Admirable initiative, he had to admit. "What have you found?" He asked as Cordelia went over and leaned against the supply cage, pointedly not looking at Xander.

"Something useful, believe it or not. That symbol Hypnos is building...this author, whoever he is, says there are two ways of stopping it, probably. One involves taking something really big and destroying it in advance, which might be a problem when he has a whole town doing his evil bidding.' He grinned. "You know, I've always wanted to say 'evil bidding' and mean it." Then his face got uncommonly serious. "Unfortunately, I think the other way is the way we're going to have to go."

Before Angel could respond, Cordelia said, "My singing?"

Nodding his head perfunctorily, Xander said, "Got it in one, Cordy."

"Told you I had layers," the woman answered snappishly.

To stop any argument from breaking out, Angel said, "Why did you say unfortunately?"

"Problem is, we'd have to let Hypno-dude complete his little symbol o'doom."

"Let me see that..." Angel took the book and read over it. "The symbol produces a sound that keeps everyone under his control and permanently asleep, but a certain tone can disrupt it, if sung with emotion. Guess that's where you come in, Cordelia."

She blinked. "My singing? But why my singing? Why me?"

Angel handed the book back to Xander, who closed it and put it down on the table. Then he turned to the cheerleader and said, "You probably don't want to know."

"Yes," she said firmly. "I do."

Sighing, Angel said, "It needs a bad singer, Cordelia. A very, very, bad singer."

"Speaking as one who is forever traumatized by Cordelia's rendition of 'Greatest Love of All,' may I just say, the gods could not have made a better choice."

"Shut up, Benedict Harris, you shacked up with your best friend and got me spiked through the stomach. Who the hell gave you the right to an opinion?" Then the anger fled her voice as she looked at Angel. "I'm that bad? That's the reason?"

But as he was about to say something to try to build up her spirits, someone they didn't know walked through the front door. His voice seemed stilted when he said, "I knew it was a good idea to have someone scope out this place."

Angel swore, but grabbed the still sleeping man and threw him into the rare books cage, grabbing a book before locking the door. Then he said, "Get up. We have to run, out the back door, now. They know we're here." Cordelia's eyes widened in fear, but she recovered enough to move towards the back of the room. After a second, the obviously weakened Xander followed suit. "Does the stadium have an announcer's booth?"

"A private one," the boy answered, "Benefit of living in a rich area. But why--"

"Let's get there. You'll see why, when."

X X X X X

She seemed almost detached from the situation, numb, even, barely even sure of who she was any more. She'd been "on the rebound," insulting, nasty to Xander and Buffy and all of them, ever since the incident, and this feeling of near-helplessness didn't do much to help.

Not to mention that she'd screwed things up by falling asleep, too. Damn her! Just when she had the opportunity to prove to these people that alienating her like that was a big mistake--

And now, the singing. Fate, the gods, or whichever deity thing controlled the way things went in Sunnydale, must have decided to dole out an extra helping of bad karma to her, because now it was telling her that the only reason she was in line to help this sad sack of a town was because she was completely and utterly talentless, at least as a singer.

She barely noticed their sprint towards the stadium, with Angel strewing people ahead of them liberally along the way, so caught up she was in her self-pity. Angel said, "Xander. Which way is the booth?"

"Not far -- that entrance, and up a flight of stairs."

"Wish we had time to pick the lock," the vampire muttered as he kicked the door in and the three of them, Xander obviously dead on his feet (too bad she had to add those last three words), made it up the stairwayand into the booth. That door was unlocked, she noted out of the corner of her mind. "This is why we're here, Xander; this way Cordelia's voice will be heard throughout the stadium," Angel added as he braced himself against the door.

Xamder forced himself to his feet and looked down on the field; as far away as she could get, she also looked at the field. It was all dug up, and a five-foot high pattern made out of the dirt--looking almost like a trumpet--looked to be mostly done.

A voice came through the door, unfamiliar this time. "Don't know why the three of you bolted up there...not going to do you any good though, because the pattern is..." and suddenly she felt a click in the air, and a low, moaning sound started to come from the direction of the trumpet's soundy end. "The pattern is done! Still...can't do with any loose ends..." And then people started pounding on the door.

"Okay, Cordy," Xander said. "Now's your chance to have a captive audience. Go ahead and afflict them with your voice."

"I can't." She couldn't!

"Now," Angel grunted, "is not the time to doubt yourself. Sing, Cordelia."

She looked around, panicky. What was she going to do? She was standing at the edge of the cliff...she knew if she could sing, she could save all the people down there. Buffy, Willow, Giles, her mother...she took a deep breath.

And then, suddenly, Xander was there next to her.

X X X X X

Okay, he knew he'd regret this later, but enough was too much. "Cordy," he said almost politely, "Something you never got to find out about me: When I get really sick, or really tired -- beyond being sick and tired of your whining, which I am- - I tend to lose all of my defense mechanisms, all those things that keep me from spouting the truth when I get really annoyed."

"And?" Cordelia demanded.

"And I just thought you should know that, 'cause you are not going to like what I say next and I wanted to get my excuse out of the way." Xander could hear the thumps by the sleeping people hurling themselves against the door, but so far Angel wasn't having any diffculty keeping them out.

The vampire shouted from his position at the door, "Xander! Knock it off!"

Xander ignored Angel and continued. "Here you are. You finally have a chance to save the world, to do the right thing, and all you can think about is your own fears. I've had fears, Angel's had fears. Get over them, dammit!"

Cordy shrunk away from the microphone. This time Angel's voice sounded positively pissed as the vampire grunted, "Xander!" But he'd come too far to let even deadboy stop him now.

"Look at them down there, Cordy. _Look _at them. They're asleep, their minds are trapped. And you--and God must have one twisted sense of humor for this--ONLY you have the power to stop it. Forget it. I'm beginning to wonder what I ever saw in you. Your great body doesn't do a damn thing to hide the insensitive, callous, shallow bitch underneath. I think you deserved everything's that's happened to you. So you got a spike through the stomach? So I betrayed you? Big goddamn deal, ice queen. I deserved so much better than you, I have no idea why I settled. " Xander ran on, desperately, barely pausing for breath. "Look at them, Cordy: They're going through hell right now. But you know what? You know what? I'd rather let them _stay in Hell_..."

Cordelia whispered, "No..."

"...than hear you sing."

Part Eight

Trick was back standing with the Mayor when another of the sleepwalkers walked up to them, carrying something.

"Well, Mr. Mayor," the voice of Hypnos came from some middle-aged broad, "Thanks for all your help. The symbol's almost completed. Incidentally, you might want to move around a bit like you're under the spell. You have a couple of interlopers holing up in the announcer's booth."

Trick jogged down the steps and peered hard into the booth, then hustled back up the stands.

"Don't have a clear view of you, but still, better safe," the vampire said. "You may be interested: I got a clear view of both Miss Cordelia Chase and the traitor vamp Angel."

Finch said, "Shouldn't you go do something about them then? What do we pay you for anyway?"

Voice dripping with venom, Trick said, "Near as I can tell, to stand around a lot and try to come up with a good reason why I shouldn't separate your head from your neck and drink the blood comes pouring out."

Hypnos interrupted them. "Mr. Trick's services will not be necessary. I can handle the barricade, and there's little they can do trapped up there."

"Nice to know," Mayor Wilkins answered amiably. "By the way, Mr. Trick here -- you two do know each other, right?"

"We've had the pleasure," the sorcerer answered.

"Well, he started me wondering: What's this symbol going to do?"

"Keep everyone who's now asleep under my permanent control."

"Trick, remind me to listen to you in the future," the Mayor said, standing up. "Hypnos, what am I going to do in control of a town full of sleepwalkers? Mr. Trick--"

"Will stay right where he is. You have no cause for complaint, Mayor; I helped get you elected, you owed me a favor, you did it. What you do afterwards is none of my concern."

Trick said. "The old you scratch my back, I stab yours routine. I like your style." The Mayor and his assistant shot him a dirty look. "Didn't say I agreed with the application, just said I liked his style."

The Mayor continued to protest, Hypnos continued to deflect his every concern, and Trick slowly backed away. Hadn't made more than halfway down before hizzoner said, "Mr. Trick: Go break up that symbol!"

Almost before Trick could take a step, legions of sleepwalkers came barreling past him, way too many for him to fight or even slow down, and within seconds he, all of his underlings, Mayor Wilkins, and the deputy Mayor were pinned down quite thoroughly. Dispassionately, Trick saw which ones had been harder to hold down and took a few mental notes; if the sorcerer wanted him and his compadres to be dust in the wind, then dust they were gonna be and no two ways about it.

"I didn't want to have to do this..." Trick watched as water was passed up the steps and Hypnos said, "Hard way, easy way, your call, Mayor Wilkins: either drink the water or I can just hit you over the head."

Finch gulped his cup and fell asleep almost immediately; Hizzoner, with a disgusted look on his face, tossed his cup to the ground. Got to give the man points for guts.

If not brains. That would be one wicked lump on his head when he woke up. If he woke up, that is, which was beginning to look less and less likely...

Then, abruptly, he was released. Hypnos said from the body right in front of him -- an elementary school student! -- "You're not going to cause any trouble, are you?"

Well, not at the moment, no, not with Hypnos holding all the cards. Trick signaled to everyone to stop struggling and they all walked out of the stadium.

One of them grumbled, "We didn't even get our children!"

Trick restrained himself from slapping him in the back of the head.

X X X X X

"You know what?" Xander yelled. "You know what? I'd rather let them stay in hell..."

She choked out a "No..." but he went on anyway.

..."than hear you sing."

And then there was dead silence except for the pounding on the door, which seemed fainter, more distant, than it had been. All of her attention was focused, now, on Xander, on what he said.

Could he be right?

Could she have...deserved it?

No. Xander Harris could never be right.

She began breathing deeply. Goddammit, she hadn't deserved that, she didn't deserve this, not from him, not from anyone! Who the hell was Xander Harris to tell her the spike through the stomach was her fault? To say that the breakup, the betrayal, was her fault?

"Who the _hell _are you to tell me I can't sing? Just you watch me, Xander, and then tell me I can't sing!"

Xander's hand snaked up and flicked a switch, turning the microphone on, and Cordelia grabbed it and began singing, nothing but pure anger radiating from her mouth, barely thinking about the song she sang:

_So call me a bitch in heat and I'll call you a liar_

_and we'll throw stones until we're dead..._

X X X X X

As Cordelia sang song after song into the microphone, Xander crept quietly over to Angel by the door and added his nauseated weight to the cause.

"I owe you an apology," Angel said. Xander's eyes widened and Angel whispered to him, "That maneuver you pulled on Cordelia to get her angry. Well played."

"Thanks. Not like I didn't feel some of it, but still--"

"See this book I have under my arm?"

Xander reached over and pulled it out. "_Honsenberg's Narcotica_." Puzzled, he looked up at Angel. "You think this'll do some good now?"

The vampire said, "You and Cordelia weren't fully affected. Why? What do the two of you have in common? And I don't--" he grunted as the pounding at the door became harder, but it stayed closed --"mean that you dated." After a few seconds, Angel said, "Think. I know you're not used to it."

Ignoring the gibe, Xander thought frantically --.and the chain of thought was interrupted by another retching fit. When he stopped, he apologized, saying, "I don't know why I keep doing that; not like I've had anything to eat in the last two days." Then he had it. "Cordelia's on some kind of freaky diet. I don't know what she's eating, but she's not drinking the water."

"Good. Now here's what good I think the book can do..."

X X X X X

On and on she went, song after angry, bitter song, now one by Patti Rothberg:

_Yet I know you're being bogus when you flirt with other women_

_and I know I could be swimmin' in your sea..._

_I shut out acceptance so I won't get hurt_

_and move on to the next one who will treat me like dirt..._

With every note, the pattern vibrated. Now and again the people out there would stop their tasks for a split second or two, stand there or begin falling, and then start up again. So her voice was interfering with them, no question at all.

And then, again, some Aimee Mann:

_Oh, baby, I wonder if when you are older, someday,_

_you'll wake up and say "My God, I should have told her--"_

_What would it take?--"But, now, here I am and the world's gotten colder..._

_and she's got the river down which I sold her..._

But she kept coming back to the same one, unable to finish it:

_I can chew like a cannibal, I can yell like a cat_

_you even had me believing that you really, really, like it like that..._

_But there was never a moment, not a moment,_

_now you know, now you know, now you know,_

_you ever got within a hundred million miles of my soul..._

_I spit, I spit in the eye, I tear, I tear out the heart and I scatter the bits;_

_I stay unseen by the light, I stay untold by the truth, I am sold by a lie..._

_by this I am able in all of my travels to make these memories quit_

_but tonight I clearly recall every little bit..._

The nearer she approached the third verse, the more the pattern out there rippled, the more discordant the other sound got, the more people stopped what they were doing...

and then when she stopped it all died down again.

Clearly, what she needed to do was finish that song.

And just as clearly, she couldn't.

Part Nine

Xander peered over the edge of the booth and for once counted his blessings: While Hypnos was trying to build some kind of human chain to reach up to them, he wasn't having much luck, because Cordelia's songs disrupted his control over the sleepwalkers long enough to make the sleepers' coordination take a nosedive. No sooner did they get a decent chain going than they froze for a few seconds and tumbled onto the seats. Sunnydale's residents were going to have an even nastier collection of bumps, bruises and broken bones than they did yesterday the way Hypnos was manhandling them, but there was nothing they could do about that.

And the stairway up to the booth was one of those cheapass metal jobbies that only allowed one or two people at a time to pound on the door, so while Angel couldn't move, the strain wasn't too great, even if the vampire was trying to puzzle something out in that big huge book o' sleep spells he'd lugged along.

Of course, there was the little difficulty of the sun rising in a few hours and pouring directly into the booth an hour or so afterwards...

But then, Xander reflected as he listened to Cordy's voice, by that time they would have already won or lost. She'd been singing for a couple of hours already, more or less straight, and her voice was showing signs of wear and tear already. Well, greater wear and tear, anyway.

He'd been more or less speaking true when he'd told Angel that his little anti-Cordy diatribe had been psychological manipulation, but there had been a grain or two of truth to it. Not the part about blaming Cordelia for what happened to her. Oh no, the pain he'd caused her and Oz was his and his alone. (It wasn't even Willow's fault, nope, nope, nope, it was his and his alone.)

But he was kinda ticked at her for dropping the ball this time and falling asleep.

Anyway, by comparison that wasn't really all that important. What was, though, was that Cordy kept singing one song in particular, and during one part of it all the sleepwalkers stopped. But then she broke off and went on to another, and they started moving around again.

He went back and quietly whispered to Angel, "You can't see what's going on out there, but I can. You hear that song she keeps singing and stopping?"

Angel said, "Yes, what about it?" a bit hesitantly. Xander explained what happened during the song in question--the actions and paralysis of them sleepwalkers. "And you're wondering..."

"I'm wondering how I can get her to sing the rest of the song!"

"Why not--" Angel was interrupted by a thump on the door--"just try that reverse psychology you used earlier?"

"I'm not used to my plans working once, I certainly don't want to tempt fate by trying it again."

"Fine, then," Angel said irritably. "Take the book--don't lose the page!" the vampire said suddenly, almost making Xander drop the thing--"and look on the left side about halfway down." Xander looked at it. The heading read, "General incantation for removing charms of somnambulence." That he understood the phrase frightened him almost as much as what he suspected Angel was asking him to do."You want me to read this?" he asked in a tone of disbelief. In answer Angel made a somewhat derisive gesture at the door, and Xander got the point immediately.

"I'm not even close to Giles' level of ability when it comes to doing research," Angel said. "I'm sure that somewhere in that book there's a spell of some sort that would be even better, but right now we're kind of pressed for time."

"I'm no good at this!" Xander protested again. "I do research, I fight, though I'm not great at either of them, but spellcasting is way out of my league." Then he started thinking. What did he do for this group that was so special? How did he fit in?

Grimacing, Angel said, "Xander, you picked a poor time to have an identity crisis. Read the spell and cast it." After a second, he said, "When you're ready, tap Cordelia on the shoulder. I'll try to figure out why she can't finish the song in question. Read the spell through the microphone and let me know what happens."

Great, performing. Xander _hated _performing. But obviously right now he didn't really have a choice. He took a deep breath and began reading over the spell.

X X X X X

Yes, she did Alanis; yes; she sang the Natalies, Merchant and Imbruglia; yes, she sang Billy Joel, yes she sang Stevie Nicks, yes, yes, yes.

She sang Heart:

_If looks could kill, you'd be lying on the floor..._

_you'd be begging me please, please, baby don't hurt me no more..._

It reached the low point when she started singing Weird Al Yankovic, though...

_I'd rather dive naked into a swimming pool filled with double-edged razor blades_

_than spend one more minute with you..._

But she couldn't finish that one song...no matter how necessary it was! Why couldn't she say it?

As she was about to begin it again, she was interrupted by a tap on the shoulder. Her eyes blazing with fury at being interrupted, she spun to face Xander. He dared? But before she could recover, he said, "I need to read a spell and Angel wants to talk to you." Then he looked down at one of those big filthy spellbooks that Giles always kept around the library and said, "It shouldn't take more than two minutes. Go."

"You read a spell?" she demanded. "Whose brilliant idea was this? This is so not what we need, everyone in love with you again."

"I guess I deserved that," he answered. "Now go. Talk."

She pulled out a stick of gum and began chewing -- anything to make her mouth less dry! -- and wearily, hesitantly walked back to talk to Angel. She really didn't trust him, much -- it was like making nice with a rabid dog. Still, at least the vampire was a rabid dog on her side, this time.

"Why are you having trouble with that one song?" Angel asked.

"I know!" she said. "I know I need to sing it. But I can't, I can't, I just can't..."

"Why?" he asked sharply.

"Because -- look. I need to sing these songs with emotion, and all of them have a lot I can sing straight out. But this one- - this one's almost perfect except for the last two lines."

"And they are?"

She took a deep breath. "I-- I-- I still don't blame you for leaving, baby, it's cold living with ghosts." And then: "But it was all his fault. I do blame him for leaving me!.I didn't cheat on him, I didn't make out with my best friend, I didn't drive a spike through my own stomach!"

"Did you tell him you loved him?"

That was so not something she expected to hear...how the he;; did she find out? Who gave Buffy the interfering witch Summers the, the, the right to tell this vampire?

Behind her, Xander was reading something into the microphone. She wasn't really paying much attention.

"I'm assuming by your silence that you didn't tell him. So tell me this, Cordelia: Do you think things might have been different if you had told him?"

And suddenly it all came flooding back. When she'd been lying there in her hospital bed, and even afterwards, before she'd come back to who she really was--or thought she had -- she'd been eaten alive by doubts. But she'd shoved them all aside once she got out of the hospital.

But as long as she refused to acknowledge that, even through the betrayal by Willow and Xander, even through the spike through the stomach, that there was some part of her that did think she was to blame -- then she could never fully be herself--

and she was strong enough to handle this. She was strong enough to handle being called a bad singer. She was strong enough to put up with all of this.

She was strong enough to sing the third verse of "Every Little Bit--"

Because, goddammit, she was _CORDELIA CHASE_.

Cordelia whirled in place. Xander wasn't saying anything. "Are you done, bad spell boy?"

He proved his non-total denseness by nodding and backing off in one smooth motion.

"Good. Because I have a song to sing." Cordelia moved towards the microphone, spat out the gum, breathed deeply, and began:

_It's funny how a morning turns a love to shame..._

_disguised and disfigured and you thought I tasted like rain..._

Part Ten

Hypnos was in trouble now, and he knew it. While the symbol was done -- and thus, supposedly, everyone asleep now under his spell -- that anti-siren up in the play-by-play booth was disrupting the waves, the luscious wave, of somnolence!

How in Hades had she known?

And, more importantly HOW could he have had such bad luck to come to the town, to the one town, that had the one woman with just the right caliber of bad voice to interfere?

Worse luck yet!--someone had survived who knew spells at least well enough to weaken his own. So if, by some twist from that hideously unprincipled bitch called fate, the horrible singer in the booth complete her song, his earlier spell would also be over.

There was no way to get up there that didn't involve tearing down the stadium--but there would be other ways of stopping her, oh yes there would. So he searched the mayor's office while at the same time he scouted around and looked for the school's main electrical box.

Thank the Gods that City Hall wasn't that far from the school.

The electrical box was to shut off the power; the mayor's office was for the powder used in the spell.

The power was for prevention; the powder was for revenge.

X X X X X

Xander finished chanting the spell -- miracle of miracles, near as he could tell he'd done it right -- and then allowed Cordy to shove him out of the way and start singing again with a vengeance. There was an aura, an electricity, to the song this time that hadn't been there before.

"Nice going," Xander said.

"You were too close to the situation," Angel said. "Was there any reaction when you finished chanting the spell?"

"Well, this one girl threw me her underwear--" he began, but this time he didn't even wait for the inevitable glare to begin before he got serious. "No, not really."

"I was hoping everyone would wake up and this would all be over. The symbol must be too strong. Still, if you chanted it right, it should have some effect." Another person smashed against the door, and Angel grunted but held firm.

"How long can you keep holding that door?"

"As long as it takes Cordelia to finish singing -- or sunrise, whichever comes first." One more blow, one more grunt, one more time the door held. "Tell me, do you know the number of a good chiropractor?"

Xander blinked. That couldn't have been..."Did you just make a joke?"

"Chalk it up to your bad influence," the vampire answered.

Then further conversation became impossible as the aura and power of Cordelia's song began to fill the booth and go beyond. Xander staggered over to one side of the small room, holding his stomach, and looked outside. The symbol was shaking like it was the center of a very tiny earthquake. All over, people were dropping to the ground, returning to their feet, and being knocked back down by the power of the song. It was working!

And then the power went out.

X X X X X

The number of people Hypnos could keep control of with his powers as they normally were was still fairly impressive -- but it wasn't nearly an entire town, though over the past couple of weeks he had taken control of almost everyone at some time or other, to test his limitations.

With the sound disrupting his glorious symbol, Hypnos relinquished his hold on all but fifty of them, concentrating first on getting the electricity shut off and second on getting the white powder into the face of one specific person.

The powder got there first; it was a lot easier to find. The person in question inhaled the powder; now, no matter what spell was cast, she'd be under his control long enough to exact his revenge.

And then, success! The power was shut off...

and so the singing would end, and victory, though delayed, was his!

X X X X X

Cordelia had been just about to start the third verse when all of a sudden the lights and the microphone cut out.

Angel and Xander both began to swear...and then realized something:

Her voice was still carrying.

X X X X X

In point of fact, Cordelia, caught up in the magic of her own voice, hadn't even noticed that the microphone had cut out as she began the third verse of the song.

She wasn't the only one caught in the magic, either. Dimly, below, those whom Hypnos had relinquished control over--and most of those he did -- were slowly becoming aware of a sound. A beautiful, radiant, compelling sound, drawing them out of their states of unconsciousness, slowly but surely. To many -- to most -- it was the most wonderful thing they had ever heard.

Yes, the voice of Cordelia Chase, the most wonderful thing they'd ever heard. Hard to believe, isn't it?

Cordelia was oblivious to this. She was oblivious to everything except the song she was singing:

_You left open the window till the morning and the winter walked in..._

_reality fired her wooden bullet, splintered under our skin_

_they say I'm walking on freedom, this is freedom,_

_now I know, now I know, now I know, now I know..._

Cordelia came to the part she'd had problems with and sailed through it effortlessly.

_I still don't blame you for leaving, baby, it's cold living with ghosts..._

_I spit, I spit in the eye, I tear, I tear out the heart and I scatter the bits_

_I stay unseen by the light, I stay untold by the truth, I am sold by a lie..._

_by this I am able in all of my travels to make these memories quit,_

_but tonight I clearly recall every little bit..._

By the end, the exact words themselves were unimportant, but the meaning and the passion shone through clearly...and on the final word, all chaos broke loose. Everyone under the spell, no matter where they were...collapsed to the ground, where many of them began waking up.

The symbol shook itself apart and ended up as several different piles of dirt in the middle of the football field.

And Cordelia, suddenly bereft of the throes of her own sonically induced ecstasy, sank to the ground with a huge smile on her face.

Finally, finally -- she had the audience she deserved.

X X X X X

Angel--free for the first time in a long while from the necessity to hold a door closed -- stood up stiffly and moved over to look at the field. Fresh from yet another bout of the dry heaves in the corner, Xander stood up, stepped around Cordelia, and in a very weird-sounding voice said "Thhhissss iiiss aaaa dreeeaaamm. Goooo hooomme annnddd gggett in bbedd." Angel gave him a very odd look, and the boy answered with a shrug. "Best I could do."

"I've seen them believe sillier stories." From the look on Xander's face he wasn't sure whether he'd been insulted or complimented, which was exactly the way the vampire had intended it. "We should probably get downstairs and check on everyone."

"Good idea."

Angel gingerly picked the unprotesting Cordelia- - still dazed and confused from her success -- and the three of them slowly walked down to the field, picking their way past several groggy and happy people. That little fib of Xander's might have been better than Angel had thought, if the looks on these people's faces were any indication.

Willow, Oz, and Giles had congregated close to the entrance, and they seemed a bit less dazed than everyone else. "Oz! Giles! Willow! Man, I've never been happier to see any of you wake up before in my life! Um, not that I've seen Willow wake up anytime recently."

Fortunately for Xander's somewhat fragile ego, none of the three was paying attention. Giles said, rubbing his neck, "I assume one of you is going to tell us what happened?"

Angel said, "The long version would take a while. Let's just wait until we're all safe, and we've found Buffy." Then he heard something charge up behind him and he spun in place just in time to receive a kick to the chest that sent him sprawling. All around him he heard gasps of shock. He put Cordelia down and stood up to face the attacker and suddenly understood the gasps.

Buffy stood there, murder in her face. "You ruined it, vampire!" she said in a voice not her own, then drew a stake and charged.

Part Eleven

Giles said, wearily but firmly, "Everyone over by Cordelia!" even though he wasn't sure exactly what they could do if the still-possessed Buffy somehow got by Angel. He, Willow and Oz had just completed several hours at hard labor, and Xander at the moment didn't look like he could have fought off a housefly. Still, everyone complied.

It was an extremely disturbing thought to be hoping for Angel to emerge victorious in a fight over Buffy, even a Buffy under the control of an evil sorcerer. Giles still had deep feelings of loathing for the vampire over his torture. And while he knew intellectually full well that it was not right to blame Angel for Angelus' crimes--

At some emotional, visceral level, every time he woke up with the memory of the physical pain, he blamed the vampire. It disturbed him greatly that he could not entirely suppress these feelings.

For the moment, though, such self-analysis needed to be put aside. Angel was constrained in fighting Buffy by an obvious and strong desire not to damage her, and while Hypnos hadn't had Slayer training he had been controlling bodies for upwards of two millennia. So it was a fairly even fight.

Buffy pulled a stake and swung it at Angel, but the vampire knocked it clear and struck back, hitting the sorcerer in the chin. Other than a jerk of the head, though, this brought no physical reaction from Buffy's body. Damn. He was too concerned about hurting Buffy to give his all to the fight. Come to think of it, in many ways that was a point in his favor; what would Giles have thought if Angel had just thrown on his vampire face and charged full tilt at his Slayer? Nothing good, that was certain. Still, Angel's defensive method of fighting wasn't likely to work. They had to find another solution, and quickly, as one of Hypnos' blows caught Angel in the face.

He quickly explained the problem to the slayerettes assembled.

"Maybe a spell would help," Willow offered wearily.

"Where would you suggest we get one?" Giles retorted gently. "I do not make it a habit to memorize such spells, and though your prowess in the area is growing rapidly I must have doubts in your ability to come up with something that would on the spur of the moment defeat the spells of a two-thousand-year-old magician -- especially given your condition at the moment." The novice witch looked hurt at Giles's statements, but what was he to do?

Then Xander spoke up. "Maybe if we cast them from a book?"

"And where would you suggest we get this book, Xander?"

"Hmmm. Good point. How about...here?" And, smirking in sheer triumph, he reached onto the ground and picked up a book that was most concealed beneath Cordelia's exhausted form. Then, the grin widening even further, he handed it to Giles.

Angel's defensive fighting was sufficing to keep the possessed Slayer away from Cordelia and them, and himself alive, but he was undergoing a bit of a beating and would surely lose eventually.

As Giles scanned the cover in mild disbelief -- _Honsenberg's Narcotica _-- Oz commented, "Xander, some day you are going to have to tell me how you did that." The emergency lighting had kicked in at some point -- he wondered briefly when the power had cut out -- and it was just barely bright enough for him to be able to read what was inside.

Giles asked Xander how he'd gotten it; Xander explained, "Angel took it from the library and during a little break in the action I read a spell out of it to help us wake people up."

"Which one?" Giles demanded.

Xander reached for the book and flipped it open. "Now, if it was the wrong one, blame deadboy, not me. But if it was the right one I'd kinda like to take the credit--"

With a snort, Giles looked at the spell -- more of an incantation, actually, since it required neither physical components nor invocations to deities -- and had to admit that it was a fairly good generic anti-sleep spell. "This would have been of some use," he said, "Though it wasn't perfect for the circumstances, it was indeed appropriate." Quickly he skimmed through the book until he came to page 77. "This one, however, is a bit more specific to the moment. Willow, do you concur?"

Surprised and happy -- exactly as Giles had intended--she grabbed the book and gave the incantation a quick once-over. "Yes! If anything will wake Buffy up right now, this will." There was a groan from behind them; slowly, Cordelia was beginning to get up.

"You're all awake!" she exclaimed, then hurriedly added, "Not like I cared that much--" Then she saw Buffy and Angel fighting. "Okay!" she demanded. "Which one of you slept with him this time?" Her gaze turned on Xander. "Well? You're the expert here, with your family history and all--"

"Cordelia," Giles said, "Buffy is still asleep, possessed by the sorcerer, and she's trying to kill Angel for ruining his plans."

"What?!" She shrieked. "But I was the one who did the singing. Me! Why is he getting all the credit?"

Willow and Oz gaped as one. "That -- that was your voice we heard as we were waking up?" Willow said. "But it was so beautiful!"

Cutting off Cordelia's sputter of outrage, Giles pointed to the fight and curtly said, "Astonishment later. Willow, are you prepared to do the incantation?"

She took a deep breath and said, "I think I can handle it," and began reading. At the same time, the possessed Buffy struck Angel two powerful blows to the face and sent the vampire sprawling to the ground, then jumped onto him and pulled a stake, clearly prepared for a killing blow.

Help came from a most unexpected quarter. Cordelia yelled, "Hey, Hypnos! I was the one who ruined your pathetic plan. That's right, pathetic! I mean, shouldn't a two thousand year old magician be able to fight back against one girl?" Imperceptibly, Xander cleared his throat.

Remarkably, the tactic worked. Hypnos stopped his assault on Angel in mid-stake and looked toward Cordelia, who continued to hurl insults at the magician as she backed slowly away -- and whether by accident or design, she was heading away from Willow.

Hypnos caught on too late, and had just turned to face Willow with an angry expression when she read the final words of the spell...

and finally, mercifully, Buffy woke up.

X X X X X

It had worked! She'd saved Buffy and Angel! Not that she cared about the vampire or anything, but Cordelia needed someone to be a witness for these people that it had been her voice, and she'd've sooner trusted Hypnos than Xander the Judas.

As Buffy staggered around asking what had happened, and Angel slowly got to his feet, Cordelia cleared her throat and said. "Now. Which one of you is going to take me home?" Everyone turned and gave her a dirty look, though she had no idea why. "I mean, come on! It's not like I want to hang around with you people any longer than I absolutely have to!"

Then the librarian spoke up. "I, I had assumed, Cordelia, that your actions of the last twenty-four hours bespoke otherwise."

And Xander, of all people, had the nerve to say, "Come on back to the Scooby Gang. You know you want to."

"Want to?" she demanded. "Want to? Look, I don't know how it is with you people, but I don't need anyone else's approval, and I don't need to be with anyone to make myself feel good. That's one thing you people taught me: You can't trust anyone, least of all one of you." She snorted. "Want to hang out with you, Xander Harris?" Her voice cracked a little, and what had been an angry tirade ended up sounding almost...wistful? Like she knew she was lying and didn't want to admit it. "Not even in your dreams."

Then she walked home alone.

Epilogue

Mr. Trick and Deputy Mayor Allan Finch stood in the mayor's office, while Mayor Wilkins himself sat behind the desk and looked as peeved as Trick had ever seen him. The window shades were closed, of course, but despite the artificial light the room was still a trifle too dark for Trick's liking.

"You know what I hate the most?" The Mayor began.

"Low voter turnout?" Trick ventured.

With a hollow chuckle, the Mayor said, "No, Mr. Trick--though that is everyone's civic duty and not a problem to be ignored. No, what I hate the most is betrayal."

Finch jumped. "Oh, relax, Allan, I wasn't talking about you." And, after a pause, added. "I know you wouldn't betray me, you're too smart for that." He fixed his gaze on Trick. "I AM a little disappointed in your performance, though. Do you know how personally embarrassed I am that I had to be rescued by the Chase girl?"

Trick was largely unfazed. "Suicide wasn't part of the bargain, your Honor. If I'd tried anything right then, the Sunnydale High janitors would be sweeping me and my people out of the stands right about now. And you knew I wasn't big on personal risks when you recruited me."

"Come now, Trick," the Mayor said, "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it."

Finch gave off a fake laugh. "Ha-ha-ha, Superchicken." Trick and the Mayor glared at him as one, and he did his best to fade back into the woodwork whence he came.

Mayor Wilkins continued, "Still, I guess no harm, no foul, and I was more to blame than you were for not suspecting Hypnos' motives sooner." He tapped a pencil on his desk. "Besides, the sorcerer was the one who betrayed me, and you know how I feel about betrayal." Straightening up in his chair, he told the Deputy Mayor, "Come here, I want you to write a note." As Finch slowly crept forward, the Mayor turned to Trick and added, "And I want you to have one of your people ready to deliver it."

X X X X X

Later that night, as Buffy, Willow and Giles were brainstorming on ways to prevent Hypnos from just stirring up more trouble when everyone fell asleep again, they were interrupted by a loud pounding on the door followed by the sound of footsteps pounding rapidly away. When Giles opened the door, he found a note jaggedly pinned to it. He read it and called Buffy over.

An hour later, Buffy and Giles were entering a back bedroom in a house on the outskirts of Sunnydale. Giles was carrying a crossbow and a flashlight while Buffy had her usual complement of vampire-Slaying weaponry. Lying on a mattress on the floor of the back bedroom --a thoroughly soundproof room, it had to be noted, and the windows were heavily covered--was a sleeping man with short, dark hair who seemed to be around forty.

"Are you sure this'll work?" Buffy asked her Watcher skeptically. "I mean, it's been two thousand years, you'd think someone would have tried this before."

"Hypnos was always a genius at concealing his actual location," Giles said. "And besides, he's never had to be particularly near those over whom he exercises his influence. And it is only that one phrase that can harm him. Are you ready?"

"After what this bastard did to you all, me, and Angel? Oh, yeah, I'm ready." Slowly and carefully, the Slayer leaned down by Hypnos' right ear and spoke those two little words that would make him lose all of his powers. "Hey, Hypnos," she began...

"Wake up!"

AFTERWORD

Normally, you put the songs quoted in a fic in the disclaimer, but there were so many I thought it would be better to stick them in an afterword instead. First off, thanks to everyone who tried to help me find appropriate songs for Cordelia's mood: The people on the posting board, the members of the Watcher's Council, and my friend Sarah Brown. Now then, the key song in this fic is Patty Griffin's amazing song "Every Little Bit," from her album "Living with Ghosts." The other songs, in order, are Paula Cole's "Throwing Stones," Patti Rothberg's "Treat Me Like Dirt," Aimee Mann's "4th of July," Heart's "If Looks Could Kill," and Weird Al Yankovic's "One More Minute." It's a bit of poetic license on my part to assume that Cordy would know all these songs, but it's my fic and it's not that great a stretch of the truth.

Finally: Cordelia's dream is based loosely on an actual dream I had at one point, and the key phrase in that dream is quoted here verbatim.


End file.
